How Restaurateurs Can Solve The Obesity Crisis: Make Customers Run For Their Food

Rashers, a bacon-themed restaurant in Toronto, recently came up with a genius marketing ploy and public health initiative: according to their Facebook page, customers can get 30% off a sandwich made with bacon (sandwich made of baaaaaacon!) if they bring in proof that they recently exercised on a trail in the shape of a pig. (See the image above, because we can’t use our words to accurately describe this.)

This is so brilliant on so many levels.

First, real race courses are boring, but race courses in the shape of other things are just way more fun. (How many men would run a half-marathon designed to look like a penis? Exactly.) Second, Rasher’s is bribing people to lose weight by offering them discounted food, which is freakin’ perverse.

Third, and most importantly, chefs involved in the Let’s Move! campaign — or any sort of anti-obesity measure, really — can, and should, use this model to encourage their customers to move more. For instance, how about a general 15% coupon off any participating restaurant if you can match Michelle Obama in pushups? Or 50% off at Le Bernardin if you show proof you swam across the English Channel (towards France, of course)? Or 75% at any Craft restaurant if you can bench-press Tom Colicchio for at least five reps? Daunting exercises, for sure, but let’s get our Rocky on and DO THIS!

…Wait, what’s that you say, Grub Street? We can get a bacon sandwich for free if we just run up to a flyer, tear off a bacon “strip,” and then present it to our nearest Rashers? Pffft, screw running! Let’s get fat for the price of free.